s.e.x Still Spoken Here.
An Anthology from the Erotic Reading Circle.
Carol Queen, Jen Cross.
Table of Contents.
Introduction * Carol Queen, PhD.
Conversation with the Editors * Carol Queen, Jen Cross, and Amy Butcher Girl in the Red Dress * Sinclair s.e.xsmith.
Heart-Shaped Box * Charles Lyons Ricky Dumb a.s.s * Jeff Jacobson.
Letter to My Girlfriend * Marlene Hoeber Poems: Gift, Ordinary Time * Christine Solano Red Paint * Tori Adams.
The Long Odds * Vince Clarthough My Desire for Women * Anain Bjorkquist The Train Trip * Avery Ca.s.sell.
Swirl * Scott Bentley.
Back in the Saddle * Erin M.
The Spirit of the O"Farrell * Simone Corday.
Poems: he has short arms, serpent stirred * seeley quest Stock Check * Elizabeth Rae.
San Francisco Earthquake 1906: Love Among the Ruins * Jack Fritscher Stilettos * Amy Butcher.
The Gambler * Dorothy Freed Tone * Ember Eli Just Another Dirty Bathroom s.e.x Love Story * Lilycat.
Poems: Life Is Good When You"re Getting f.u.c.ked, I Have Seen The Future And It Is Full Of Big d.i.c.ks * h.o.r.ehound Stillpoint pink and devastating * Jen Cross G.o.d"s Country (Excerpt) * Norman Armstrong.
It Just Takes Practice * Eugenia Mills Poems: Reading, Fern * Joy West Bambino * Gina de Vries.
A Short Story * Holly Zwalf Mirror in the Machine * Carol Queen How To Start Your Own Erotic Reading Circle * Jen Cross.
Acknowledgements.
Dedication.
To all the readers who"ve graced the Erotic Reading Circle with their words and erotic brilliance over these years and To Good Vibrations for getting it all started and To all the new Circles about to gather-may you celebrate the beautiful and complicated erotic experience with compa.s.sion, generosity, and kindness. Thank you for holding s.p.a.ce for your own and others" creative erotic expression.
Carol Queen, PhD.
I began to write in middle school. I journaled every single night when I was a pup, only stopping that daily practice when I went to college. But even there I wrote and wrote, now when the spirit moved meand it moved me often, because a youth can always talk to herself, even when she doesn"t have others to talk to. I filled book upon book with hand-written musings, a.n.a.lyzing and describing everything around me, everything that was troubling or inspiring or new. If you are not keeping a journal, my friend, please doit is such an extraordinary gift to yourself, to take your own life so seriously that you make a book out of it, even if it"s only for your own eyes ... even if you never re-read it after you fill the pages. Years later I realized I had been writing the story of myself for myself, giving my older self a set of notes to help me make sense of my younger self, scattering breadcrumbs through a forest that, some days, was very dark and trackless.
Now I know I was also teaching myself to write. I never had a formal writing cla.s.s, aside from those compulsory ones in high school. I didn"t get an MFA, didn"t apprentice to some amazing mentor, didn"t go to Iowa or anywhere else. I just wrote, and read, and wrote, and the scritching of my pen all alone in rooms, or surrounded by the comforting buzz of cafes, comprises a great deal of how I built my future.
I"m telling youpick up a pen.
Since it was my journal, there was a lot of s.e.x in it, and that"s what started me on the path of becoming a s.e.x writer. (Even when there wasn"t any actual s.e.x being had, there was yearning for and thinking about it, the next best thing.) Once, on a BART train the week after the Loma Prieta earthquake had knocked down part of the Bay Area"s freeway system, I sat my journal, in which I had been writing about (what else?) another night with Robert, down on the seat where I"d been writing, and gaped out the windowso struck by the damage was I that I left the train without it, and was so bereft that my raw doc.u.ment of new love and heady f.u.c.king was gone forever that I vowed I would go get hypnotized so that I could retrieve it, word for word.
(The guy who picked it up went to pretty extreme lengths to find me and return it. He left his card; he was a filmmaker, and to this day I keep an eye out in case the story of my life surprises me on Netflix.) What I"m trying to say, I think, is that I mostly talked to myself for the first twenty years of my writing life. Until I found the Erotic Reading Circle. I visited it at least once in the 1980s, when I was new to San Franciscojust a few women crowded into the tiny Good Vibrations store on 22nd and Dolores. I think we sat on the floor. Some of them read their own writing; others got up, when it was their turn, to pull a book off the shelves, sharing someone else"s words.
By the time I began working at Good Vibrations myself, I was just beginning to write for publications, in anthologies and "zines. I soon took over the stewardship of the Erotic Reading Circle, joined by Jack Davis, the first man who came to work at GV. Wonderful readers flocked to the circle, too many to namebut just as exciting as hearing the opening pages of the piece that would later become Molly Weatherfield"s BDSM novel Carrie"s Story (take a back seat, 50 Shades of Grey!) was the pleasure of hearing people who"d ventured in with their very first-ever piece of erotic writing. From then until now, a span of twenty years, it is still such a thrill to hear the initial words of someone"s first-ever s.e.x storyand a huge honor to be able to nurture them with feedback and appreciation.
We never know when a new person comes in the door what they"ll read when they pull out their folded ma.n.u.script or their laptop. We cannot predict by looking at a person"s apparent gender, age, station in life (and all of these are only appearances, after allyou cannot judge a book by its cover, nor the person who has written it), can"t a.s.sume what fantasy or experience has flowered from their pen or their blinking cursor. It is the most beautiful opportunity to be reminded of the diverse experiences and ident.i.ties of the humans around us, but also of their unbounded erotic imaginations. We spend much time in the s.e.x-positive world decrying the role of shame and lack of informationbut people find workarounds, and when they sit down to write, no matter where they came from, they may dive into surprisingly deep waters.
I don"t know how many stories I"ve heard at Erotic Reading Circle gatheringshundreds, maybe thousands. I have been touched by every one, moved by other Circle members" feedback, taught more about the craft of writing just from my co-facilitator Jen Cross"s wise and loving observations than I"ve learned from any other single place. (Except, I suppose, my journal.) At the Circle, we have created the kind of s.e.xual world every single one of us deserves: one in which each of us has a voice, a unique array of experiences that make us distinct and valuable to others for our knowledge and perspective, and where we can come together in our wonderful difference and feel, at the end of two hours, that we built a new world together. You"re holding a book in your hands that contains way more than just each individual author"s erotic dream. You are holding synergy, and community. I hope it makes you feel that the possibilities, on and off the page, are endless. The Erotic Reading Circle has certainly done that for me.
-San Francisco, August 2014.
"My community for writing is the Circle": A conversation about the Erotic Reading Circle.
Carol Queen, Jen Cross, and Amy Butcher.
JC: I think it would be great to go back to the beginning. Carol, I love hearing the stories about the beginnings of the Erotic Reading Circle. Who had the idea, what was the initial impetus around holding such a s.p.a.ce?
CQ: The original Erotic Reading Circle was born out of the early years of Good Vibrations, actually, within five, six, seven at the most, years of Good Vibes having begun in 1977, little postage-stamp- sized store in between the Mission district and Noe Valley in San Francisco. As part of the after-hours programming, the Erotic Reading Circle started really to bring newcomers into the store. There were barely any books on the shelves yet. The publishing boom of erotica in the 1990s was years in advance and [Good Vibes] hadn"t even started publishing the erotica anthologies that Susie Bright and Joani Blank helped to put together and put out in the world. But it was, I think, the period that Susie Bright had already joined their staff. And so I can a.s.sume that she had something to do with it back in the day. I know that Stafford Kathy Winks was at the helm when I joined [the Reading Circle] one night in the mid-"80s, and, then as now, it was a small group of people reading aloud, talking a little bit amongst themselves about each piece. I think we do more of that than we did then. And we"re more likely now to have it be our own work that we read. In those days, it wasn"t always the writer herself or himself who came to share their work. It was some people who wanted to read erotica and be in fellowship around their love of erotica.
AB: Oh, interesting.
CQ: I joined Good Vibes in 1990. And it wasn"t very long before I put my hand up in the air and said I wanted to take over this circle. And for a while Jack Davis was my co-circle-convener, and by that time the anthology boom had happened, the zine boom had happened. No websites yet but we had a lot of writers-the writers that San Francisco is known for now, in the early mid-90s [they] would come to the Erotic Reading Circle and try out their stuff on each other. And so while it still wasn"t necessarily a writer"s own work that was shared, it got more and more likely that that was the case. [The Circle] went dormant for a little while, the very end of the "90s or the beginning of the "00s, and then you came to town, Jen Cross. When we expressed interest in doing it at the Center for s.e.x and Culture, Good Vibes said "take it, run, fly with it." And the rest is history that you"re part of.
JC: And you and Jack co-edited the first Erotic Reading Circle anthology.
CQ: s.e.x Spoken Here, a t.i.tle that actually was cooked up by Lawrence Schimel who I did Pomos.e.xuals and Switch Hitters with Cleis back in the "90s. From far away in New York or Spain or wherever he was he thought of this t.i.tle and we went with it. At that point we had been doing the Circle for quite a few years and I actually can remember the moment that I knew that we had to do that anthology. There was one specific writer who came along and he read a story-and this is pre-Clinton and Lewinsky, I just want to say this as a preamble-he read a story he had written about a man and a woman who used cigars as a s.e.x toy. Is it possible that Clinton could have read that story? I don"t know! But I heard it and it was so freakin" creative. Mind you I already had my degree (or almost) in s.e.xology and I thought I"d been around the block a couple of times and I was all ... "Wow! We have to put that in a book." So we did.
AB: And, Jen, how did you get involved in the Circle?
JC: I had come to San Francisco in 2002 to lead erotic writing workshops, was doing my practic.u.m for my master"s degree and I was leading an erotic writing workshop for queer women survivors of s.e.xual trauma. Of course, I knew about Carol Queen and I was a huge fan; we were introduced a few years later when I was hoping to come and use the Center to run a series of workshops there. I had found a copy of s.e.x Spoken Here, I think when I was at Community Thrift buying anthologies as research for my thesis, and [the Erotic Reading Circle] felt like something that should be happening in San Francisco and wasn"t. This sort of s.p.a.ce should be available! That feels very bold, that I would have just said to Carol, "Is this something that you want to start doing again?" And she said, "Yes!" [After it got going again,] I liked to encourage writers who were in my workshops, who wanted to start moving their work out into the world, to come to the Erotic Reading Circle.
CQ: It"s a fantastic step in between ...
JC: [To read aloud] any piece of new writing is really risky to do, [and it"s even more challenging to] read a piece that has to do with s.e.x which is [often, in other workshop s.p.a.ces,] treated like it"s less than, easy, ridiculous, and not offered the same merit as other forms of writing.
CQ: And presumed to be experientially-based when it isn"t always, although sometimes it clearly is, and that"s even more intimate and extraordinary, when someone brings something that we know is their own true experience, what an amount of courage it can take.
JC: And even for folks I think who are comfortable, who have maybe written a lot about s.e.x and read often in the Circle and in other places, when they bring a new piece of writing, it"s still really scary, it"s still really risky, it"s still sort of stepping into that same "oh my G.o.d, is somebody gonna laugh at me? Is someone going to think this is ridiculous? Is someone going to take this apart?"
AB: I remember coming to a Circle once where, um, you know usually there"s somewhere between 5 and 15 people in the circle. And I came to one Circle and it was just the two of you and me. And this is early on in my coming to the Circle. And I read a piece that was one of the more vulnerable ones-it was a harsher piece than I usually write, there was no humor in it, there was nothing to protect me in that piece. And I read it to the two of you. And I was shaking afterwards, after hearing it, having those words come out of my body. But that was such an important experience for me and one of the things it taught me is that that shaking is when I know I"ve written something true. And so I actually look for that now. And I wouldn"t have discovered that had I not had a chance to read aloud to the two of you and to larger groups afterwards.
JC: Feels like there"s a somatic process happening right there. I would love to find the language for that. This is something we were talking about before, that there"re these different pieces around engaging with a new piece of writing: there"s the actual finding language for something, writing it down, putting it on the page, which is an extraordinary step for many people. And then there"s that next piece of bringing it up off the page, like we have to embody the words in writing them down in the first place, whether we"re writing by hand or whether we"re typing it in, it"s still moving through our bodies, moving through our physical experience. Whether we"ve done it before or not, I"m thinking how would that feel, and I"m calling on my own physical experience. And so it"s this embodying process, or can be, to generate the work and then to sit in this s.p.a.ce and move it up through the page, up through our bodies so we can hold it in our throat, to hold the words in our mouths, and to move them through us in that way-and then we"re also getting to say these things out loud that we"re never supposed to say, that we"re rarely encouraged to speak, even ... it can still be so uncomfortable, even in private, even in sort of an intimate s.e.xual experience.
CQ: Even to a lover, yeah.
JC: Yes. Right. And so you were talking about that a little bit before, about the power of that reading aloud.
CQ: Well, one of the things that I think is extraordinary about the Erotic Reading Circle, especially for people who read their own work, although what you just described of the embodiment and voicing of the forbidden, that would be true of anybody who walked through the door and took any book off the shelf here at the Center for s.e.x and Culture and started to read the s.e.x words out of it. So that would be true, regardless. But the person who has written their own fantasy, experience, piece of work that they hope is art, whatever-to speak it, to read it aloud is a big deal.
JC: I wanted to rewind a little bit and hear how you, [Amy,] came to be involve in the Erotic Reading Circle.
AB: Actually, about two weeks before I moved to San Francisco, I was living in Boston and I took a writing workshop with Mich.e.l.le Tea in Boston and then-I was not stalking her-but then followed her back to San Francisco and I think that was the first writing workshop I"d ever done and so I was like "Oh, this!" I got some good feedback and could feel my legs underneath me a little bit. [I thought,] "I need to replicate that, I want more of that" and so-like so many other things in San Francisco-I came here and [asked myself,] "OK, where"s that workshop that will let me write s.m.u.t and talk about it and learn about it?" And so I think I stumbled across it through the Center for s.e.x & Culture. I don"t even remember what the first story was that I read, I"m sure it was quite tenuous with probably some fun things in it ... I had these incredible somatic experiences of reading stuff, and crafted all sorts of weird, strange stories and felt like my weird, strange stories were accepted and so trusted my own voice a little bit more ...
JC: Those dish gloves!
AB: Oh yes, "Dish Gloves to Die For." Yeah, I thought erotic writing had to be this very narrow s.e.x-specific thing and that wasn"t what I was writing about, so getting a chance to read it in the Circle and discover that that was OK liberated me to the point where now we have a murder mystery [Paws for Consideration] that has dungeon scenes in it, right? So all of that can be traced back to both the craft and the confidence building that"s come out of being a part of the Circle. And hearing the other voices, too. So, that"s what I remember.
What happens at the Erotic Reading Circle?
JC: One of the pieces that we get at the Circle is that you put your words out, and you get an immediate response from folks while you"re reading, as well, so you get to hear where somebody thought something was funny, or people thought something was hot, or something was alarming ... and then after we"re done reading folks are telling us, "this was really hot for me" or "here"s something that was really strong for me about this piece" ... To have your work met with respect and received as a [worthwhile] piece of writing, to know that folks are taking it seriously, that they"re saying "Here"s what I really loved about it" and "Yeah, I really liked this character" and "It was hard for me to believe they would necessarily do this" and "I wonder about ..." is such a validating thing for us as writers.
CQ: [At the Erotic Reading Circle,] we get this great mix of people who do write very seriously for publication, thinking about their audience, having been trained sometimes or just sort of being natural good or pretty good writers and then we get the people who just heard about the Circle and have this one thing and they think they"ll come and read it. And to treat everybody just the same in that Circle to me is one of the miraculous things that we can do. I"m sure I can think of, well right now I can think of one person who is actively looking for publishing options for everything she writes that I"m pretty sure she walked in the door not being in that s.p.a.ce at all, writing for herself, and now she"s getting published and she"s going to hit the "Best of-" collections soon if she hasn"t already.
JC: That"s right.
CQ: And that"s so awesome to see and experience-but somebody who walks in the door having just scrawled something for their partner and their partner responded so well that they decided to come share it with somebody else-it"s so beautiful. The intimacy of that [sharing] helps those of us who really want to be craftspeople with erotic writing. It"s a kind of a different craft-it"s the same but it"s also different than the craft of writing in general, right? You know you can do everything right in an erotic story and it may or may not have the investment of erotic charge that we hope it will have. And that"s a sort of a special sauce; I don"t even know if I can say how to put it in there but I feel like at the Circle we totally know it when we see it.
AB: And that it comes in such different packages, I mean it"s not like you show up and everybody is reading a cigar story-the diversity of erotic expression just blows my mind, and that"s part of why I show up as much as I can, almost every month, because like I never know what it"s going to be. Is it going to be a sci-fi futuristic dystopian weird chapter 11 fascinating book happening? Is it going to be a movie script someone is working on? is it going to be something about an erotic dance as somebody"s dying? There"s such a diversity of erotic expression, it frees me to think all things are possible.
The uses of erotic writing AB: [Carol,] you referenced that people are often writing either memoir or from their own experience or something-you know, I think one of the fun things for me is using erotic writing as a halfway step: "I don"t know if I really want to do that thing, so I"m going to write about doing that thing that I"ve never done." To find the words I have to find it through my body so I will get to sort of test drive it in a really safe way, and then bring it to the Circle and read it and test drive it again in that way. And then I can decide if I actually want to go out and do it, or if the writing of it suffices on that occasion.
JC: Right on.
AB: I don"t think I knew that about erotic writing, that it had this almost like psychological playground aspect to it. It"s fun.
CQ: It"s really fun. One of the things that"s wonderful about doing it in San Francisco (although this is not to say that you wouldn"t find this happening elsewhere, too; I don"t want to privilege San Francisco in that way, although clearly it"s true of here) is that you"ll find four or five other people in the circle who are likely to have some knowledge about whatever it was you [tried] and, depending on who they are, they"ll tell you whether you tied the knot right in chapter 2 ...
JC: Exactly.
CQ: Or you"ll get a sense of whether you hit the mark for that particular kind of erotic behavior or s.p.a.ce from the responses of people who already have that as part of their oeuvre or, best case scenario, you could find somebody to try it out with, but that"s not ever really been the point. I mean, maybe there"s been some cruising at the Erotic Reading Circle but it"s so about the writing, it"s kind of interesting actually. I can imagine in many other places that this would be the hottest game in town! We"re valuing writing and erotic experience and erotic vision and language and all of the stuff that gets packed up in these pieces, more than anything. And because it has always been-and this is part of its history, too, and clearly part of its present-a place where people could be together in a group where they would maybe be the only person of their flavor in the group ... it"s kind of a teaching s.p.a.ce. It"s a s.e.xual diversity appreciation s.p.a.ce.
AB: Right. One of the things I love about the Circle is the norm of talking about the protagonist of the story, as opposed to [saying] "when you [did that] ...", "when you said ..." It"s about what your character said, and so there"s a certain separation that happens, and yet there"s so many stories that I can still hear the person reading-it really matt to me that it was that person reading that story, and I don"t know if it was about them or not and I don"t really care if it was.
JC: And it makes room in the s.p.a.ce for this breadth of what erotic and erotica can be, right? That we can have this diversity of voices and this diversity of subject matter, and that each writer can have such diversity of voices ... that the erotic can embody so many different parts of our lives, that we can have such a variety of emotional responses, too, which gives us lots of permission as writers [and as erotic beings.
CQ: Erotica is a genre that"s getting a little-I"m not sure "respect" is exactly the right word, but attention, clearly. And it"s getting so much attention that everybody"s going to be doing it now, who knows, but I don"t know that I"ve seen our groups get bigger and bigger and bigger since Fifty Shades or anything like that. What I do feel like I see here is the way that the Venn diagram of erotic content meets all the other genres.
JC: Right. Yes, yes, yes.
CQ: Like the night of the gay zombie story, I thought to myself, "A gay zombie story!" Of course. Our first ever gay zombie story here at the Erotic Reading Circle. Maybe I said that out loud. But there"s something about what the other genre will bring, how it reveals each kind of writing in a different way because it"s a mash-up of two things that might be distinct in other libraries ... here the erotic is part of virtually everything that gets read at the Circle. Or at least s.e.xual commentary. We make it sound like it"s all fiction and memoir, but it"s essays, too, sort of s.e.xual philosophy, it"s that one guy who was writing a how-to book based on his experience as a medical doctor. I mean there"s so many different pieces to what we can do [at the Circle].
AB: As you"ve been recounting certain stories that have been read, and I"m remembering those, it makes me feel like the Erotic Reading Circle is like live theater. It"s a moment in time, people come, they share a story and then, you know, they may go away and we many never see them again. This anthology [is] an interesting snapshot, basically some fabulous writing that"s happened in the Circle, [though that] doesn"t fully capture the experience of the Circle.
JC: Something we"ll invite folks to do as they purchase the book would be to hold your own Circle, or hold a salon, invite your friends, invite folks right into your s.p.a.ce and think about reading these pieces aloud, because all the pieces in the book re-embody the Circle.
What can the Circle hold?
CQ: A circle is a lot of things. It"s a shape of holding, going all the way back to baskets and pots and things that we know from archeology ... it"s also a spell. It"s a spell, it certainly is a pagan spell, there"s no question about that. But, you know, I can think of other spiritual ent.i.ties that always met in a circle. And there"s something about that [that connects with] the degree to which we"re making sure that we give each reader respect.
JC: Another powerful piece of the Circle is that we don"t put any restrictions on what people can read about. [We don"t say,] "Don"t bring this kind of writing, or this kind of erotica, or this topic." Folks have brought risky, edgy, dangerous content, stuff that makes some people really uncomfortable even to sit with, stuff that can really push our [personal or political] boundaries. And what does it mean to receive that work respectfully as a piece of writing? To respond to it, giving our authentic open response, not knowing what"s autobiography, what"s fiction-making s.p.a.ce and engaging with it respectfully is a powerful gift of this Circle. And it"s a really tender place.
CQ: And surprisingly few people that we"ve known of, I think, have not found that to be congenial or have found anything threatening enough that they felt like they needed to leave. I mean, we don"t always know why people go and don"t come back, but I can only think of one person that I know for sure who got triggered [and couldn"t return]. I can think of a recent piece of writing that was edgy, that the writer of it said, "I"m trying to determine how edgy this is by bringing it here," and let us become part of that decision-making process. It"s like a self negotiation, isn"t it, to know when you walk in the door that you might have something that you don"t want your name on or that you are not sure if it"s going to fit into an anthology or maybe it"s a little non-consensual for that or whatever it might have been. And asking, "What"s here that I need to keep, what"s here that might be negotiable? Talk to me."
Starting your own Circle JC: Let"s say there"s this group of folks who would like to get together and start their own Erotic Reading Circle in their town. How would you describe the "ground rules," the practices of our Erotic Reading Circle as we"ve envisioned it here at the Center for s.e.x and Culture?
CQ: I"d say that everyone is welcome to read their work or others" work, to listen, and that everyone is welcome to give positive, supportive, thoughtful feedback. Know that anybody who ever puts pen to paper, or clicks or touches their gizmo or whatever tomorrow"s technology is of making creative writing happen, already has a whole world of people behind them saying you shouldn"t speak up, you can"t say that. Even if they"re not writing about s.e.x. I mean everybody has had somebody in the world probably tell them they should shut up. And we want to do the opposite thing for the members of the Circle and encourage them to speak up, to write, to get it going. And I think almost everybody who would ever come to such a thing as an Erotic Reading Circle gets that. I think once we say that kind of opening-the preamble that you almost always say, Jen-I think people get that right away. Oh, we want to make this a safe s.p.a.ce.
JC: I think what I invite us to do is remember that at the Erotic Reading Circle we have a real breadth of understanding of what the erotic is and so folks can be invited to bring material that is of all different varieties and contents. That we want to keep readings to about 10 minutes. That we really want to listen intently and attentively to each other"s work. And [pulling from the Amherst Writers & Artists method], we request that if folks have specific kinds of feedback that want to receive from the room to let us know. That otherwise we really default to saying what"s strong for us, what we like about a piece of writing. Especially if it"s a brand new piece of writing, I encourage us not to think about how we"d critique it, because [the writer] has those voices already in their head telling them what"s wrong with this piece. It"s really helpful to get from the room that other side, to hear about what"s strong, what"s working in the piece. Also, that the writer can come with specific questions ("I"m really wondering how this voice is working"), so when we"re giving more critical feedback the writer is really driving that. We can say, you know, "you wondered about if this is hot," so we can give pretty immediate response to that. And so I feel that"s what I ... what else do I say? And I like the specificity around wanting this to be a safe s.p.a.ce and wanting this to be a s.p.a.ce where folks feel ready to take risks. That it isn"t actually always comfortable-it"s often not comfortable-but we can sit with discomfort and we can hold each other in it and we can hold each other"s writing in that, which I think strengthens us as writers and also as folks in the world that we get to do something risky like this and be met with kindness and generosity, which is something you were talking about earlier.
AB: And I love the simplicity. It could sound like those are very simple instructions, yet I think all of those very simple things create the safety. One could overlook them easily, but I think they"re incredibly important to the potency that comes from creating a strong container. For somebody trying to set up their own Circle, even though those things sound simple, don"t not do them. Because they"re actually critically important.
CQ: Another thing you say often is "What stays with you?" You know so even if it"s just the vibe of the story, if it"s one particular element of the story, it helps people figure out what they"ve got going on to build on if that"s what they"re choosing to use their time at the Erotic Reading Circle for. I think that there are different reasons that people walk in the door. People come in to use this as a writing workshop-like s.p.a.ce. I think there"s no question that people are using it for that purpose, but that"s not the only reason at all. Some people are doing it because they"re scared, some people are doing it because they"re really proud of their piece of writing and they"re being kind of exhibitionistic about it-"I"ve just gotta share it!"-and every once in a while somebody will come in with something that"s just brand new and they"re all "Woohoo!"-they"re all excited about having just finished it and that"s kind of sweet. And I think some people come to the Erotic Reading Circle just to be in a s.e.xually diverse s.p.a.ce.
JC: To be in community.
CQ: That there is a real powerful thing: that it"s personal but can be kind of anonymous, that it"s a special zone. It"s not exactly like any other zone of s.e.x positivity or s.e.xual diversity or whatever. It"s not exactly like anything else, it"s unique.
Making s.p.a.ce for erotic art CQ: As Dorian [Katz], our gallerist, keeps pointing out about the art show that we have here, you think that these amazing artists would just put the stuff in any gallery show with the other art that they make. But other galleries don"t always accept it. You"d think there"d be many, many more places for this kind of art-you know, everybody"s at least a little interested in s.e.x, aren"t they? A lot of creative people have some sort of s.e.xually related work that they"ve done. Whether they"re established and known creatives or whether they"re Henry Darger in Chicago in his room who didn"t get a museum until after he was dead. I mean, there"s a lot of juice in the s.e.xual for a creative person and the idea that many people can"t ever find a place to take that creativity, that just makes me really sad. It"s one of the things about being free enough in San Francisco to have created more than one cultural s.p.a.ce for s.e.x-related art making. That"s one of the things that helps make San Francisco San Francisco. It"s because we have so many voices that we feel like it"s safe to come out and add our own, I think. And the Circle makes that happen in miniature.
AB: Yeah, for sure. And it, you know, you use the metaphor of an art s.p.a.ce and there is this beautiful [art show] up right now that unfortunately the reader can"t see but I think if you took any one of those pieces and put it in a show with all the "normal" pieces then it"s going to get held out as, "Oh, that"s the s.e.x piece," and so it doesn"t get looked at as a piece of art work in the same way. And so when you come to the Erotic Reading Circle and everybody"s reading erotic stuff, it"s not just like "Oh, my G.o.d, you wrote an erotic piece." Instead, [the response is,] "Oh, huh, let"s look at your erotic piece in context of these other erotic pieces," and now that"s a whole different conversation. It"s a level of witnessing that can"t happen elsewhere.
JC: Right, folks will describe being at other, more traditional workshop settings, where other writers are so pulled out by the content-"Oh, my G.o.d, this is a piece of writing about s.e.x!" or, more supportively, "It was really brave that you wrote that piece about s.e.x!" That can be really powerful and generous feedback, yes, but sometimes we would like more than that. Like, what was it about the piece that was working? What did you think about these characters? Sometimes folks in a more traditional workshop setting can"t drop down beyond "These people are having s.e.x!" In this s.p.a.ce-I really like how you articulate that, Amy-in this s.p.a.ce, ok, there"s lots of s.e.x happening in all these pieces and so how are we engaging with them as legitimate works of art? How are we talking about this? How can we help this person with their craft? Being able to get a different quality of response feels really important.
Many times people are bringing, you know, a piece of short fiction, a blog post, a poem, that is a fully contained piece and it"s erotic-that"s part of the point of the story, is that it"s a piece of erotic writing, right? And then other people are working on larger works of fiction and are using erotic interaction as a way to develop their characters, to kind of give us more information about their characters, which I love. It"s such a powerful way to explore more about a particular character. Who are they interested in? How do they have these conversations? There are folks who wouldn"t necessarily consider themselves erotic writers who would be welcome in this s.p.a.ce. Maybe they don"t consider themselves genre writers, or erotic genre writers, but still would like to have some s.p.a.ce to workshop or engage the erotic content in their writing-there is s.p.a.ce for that as well. You don"t have to call yourself an erotic writer to be welcome in the Circle.
What comes of partic.i.p.ating in the Circle?
JC: So, if we were going to think about some outcomes, what has been the result for folks of the Erotic Reading Circle? I mean, readers can get some more information about that from [the mini interviews that accompany] each of the stories but there certainly have been folks who come through either the first incarnation of the Erotic Reading Circle or this one, who have moved on to greater heights. I mean Amy, you"re absolutely one of those folks! You wanted to find a place to share your work and then you"ve been published in Best Lesbian Erotica and you have a novel published (award- winning!), and then you have another one coming.
AB: Yes, that true, and I think the confidence I gained from the Circle, and especially around giving voice to what seemed like taboo things to me, that opened up just a whole world of possibility-yeah, I don"t know that I would have done any of those things without the Circle actually, for real. For reals.
CQ: And I"m thinking of my comrades at Perverts Put Out and remembering how many of those regular readers had their moment or two, at least, at the Circle. The person that stands out for me the most as an Erotic Reading Circle alum is Simon Sheppard who has become such an important gay erotic writer, s.e.x essay writer, curator of Perverts Put Out lo these many years. And when Good Vibrations was at 23rd and Valencia, he lived right around the corner and so always, always came to the Circle. And there were a number of gay men in those days who were part of the Circle who sort of drifted away. But one who used to come who we see at almost every Perverts Put Out now is the great h.o.r.ehound Stillpoint, whose long-form prose poetry is amazing.
AB: The two of you are both quite accomplished, widely published writers-how does the Erotic Reading Circle, as you"re a part of it today, affect your writing? Does it support you in any particular way now?
JC: I have often brought new writing in to the Circle and it"s usually work that I had generated at a workshop that I"m bringing out into a room of new ears; it"s helpful for me [to share the work with] folks who are coming from different experience, different points of view, who are not necessarily like me, who are going to be receiving it from a different point of view. That"s really helpful for me as a writer.